Arda aka Apsilon spent a whole decade writing lyrics and rapping before the double single ‘Sport/Ich leb’ (2021) was the first official sign of life from a new calibre of spoken word singer on the relevant streaming portals. From then on, everything happened very quickly: Apsilon dropped the EPs ‘Gast’ and ‘32 Zähne’ (2022) in one year, worked on features with Xaver and Wa22ermann and gave a TEDx talk on ‘Racist Normality’ at the University of Mannheim. You can tell that the lyricist from Berlin-Moabit has a lot on his mind thanks to his ambiguous lyrics and socially critical approach. However, the EP ‘Grau’ (2023) underlines such facts once again and puts Apsilon himself on the radar of artists from outside the scene. The fact that the accompanying feature with Paula Hartmann ‘Grau’ was granted a place in this year's German single charts is no longer a surprise to anyone. A plank of trap and provocation, this guy surfs across the New Wave to glowing horizons - whether they dazzle or show the way, everyone has to decipher for themselves.